On 24th May 2010, Rirkrit Tiravanija drew a pencil reproduction of a news photograph taken by Nicolas Asfouri depicting soldiers firing at red-shirt protesters on 14th May 2010, and Nico Dockx erased the drawing (in a reference to Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing). The action was a visual metaphor for the state’s attempts to remove memories of violence against protesters, though the prolonged time taken to erase the drawing — twenty-two minutes — also showed the difficulty of doing so. Rirkrit and Dockx released a vinyl record (Drawing Erasing Talking) featuring the sound of drawing and erasing, and a discussion between them about the process, in 2014.
